50% 0f doctors have used wikipedia as a reference. | Hacker News Reader

50% 0f doctors have used wikipedia as a reference.

newscientist.com

26 pointsolefoo21 comments

I don't know why Wikipedia continues to get a bad wrap for what it is: a very general source of information online. I doubt any Doctor would consult Wikipedia in making a decision on diagnosis or treatment.

However, Wikipedia continues to be the best source of general information online. It is the Encyclopedia Brittanica of our time. It provides information which can then be used as a launching point for further research.

Doctors in particular are some of the most knowledgeable people around. They are, and have to be, life-long learners. With that said, Wikipedia is an excellent resource to begin online research, but it is by no means definitive. So this "study" is by no means troubling to me.

Remember Mycin? Great expert system to support doctors. Never really used because people where afraid about ethical and legal issues.

While this is not the same, how long before someone gets hurt because some article was not totally correct or something similar? Someone decides to blame Wikipedia or something like that and puff, all other doctors stop using it for fear of being put in a similar situation.

I, for one support the use of additional information from sources like Wikipedia. Anyone remember that girl who self-diagnosed herself when all the doctors before couldn't figure out what was wrong with her? It shows that decent information that's peer reviewed constantly and with high availability can be a great asset.

Let's hope people star trusting technology more in situations like this.

Can't be much worse than a doctor not knowing the answer and making a wild guess.

We place way to much implicit trust in medical professionals and esp. doctors. Look at how many crappy IT workers are out there I've got to believe that the medical field can't be much different.

The meaning of that 50% is fairly elusive, since the research is not accessible to us. I'm guessing it's the result of asking something like "Have you ever looked up any medical information on wikipedia?"; but they might just as easily have omitted the 'medical' from the question.

This is a good sign.

Although I'm sure some information on the internet is unreliable, I've been to plenty of doctors in my life who have made incorrect diagnoses and given me unreliable information too.

When doctors and patients have more information more easily available (even if some percentage is incorrect), I can't believe that wouldn't help.

The real question is, why aren't all doctors checking online resources like wikipedia in addition to the resources they normally use?

Yes it is. Here's a quote from the article:

"How does Wikipedia fare as a medical reference? Its collaborative, user-generated philosophy generally means that errors are caught and corrected quickly. Several studies, including one examining health information, another probing articles on surgery, and one focusing on drugs, found the online encyclopedia to be almost entirely free of factual errors."

What I like about using Wikipedia for "important" stuff is that it contains references to so many things. If you're concerned that someone is misinterpreting a medical paper, well, go follow the reference before you do anything important. Wikipedia doesn't ask for blind trust; if you give it such trust, the fault lies with the truster, not Wikipedia.

This doesn't solve every problem (missing references, bad references, entire missing concepts), but, well, those are givens for any reference source, or any written work, really.

I've used Wikipedia to look up additional info on certain medical conditions family members have. Generally medical articles have extremely conscientious footnotes and citations. It's very easy to check primary sources to ascertain accuracy. Hit up PubMed if you need more info!

Encyclopedias have never been considered acceptable authoritative sources. So long as we keep in mind the context and purpose of the resource, I see no problem in doctors using Wikipedia as a convenient high-level overview in their research.

The danger would be 4chan, etc, changing info that has potentially life-threatening implications.

I wouldn't worry about that. There are no lulz to be had if nobody notices, and wiki vandalism is so easy (and so easily correctable) that posting a wiki alteration on 4chan is usually derided as lame - so much so that some other 4channer will likely revert and alert, since there are more lulz to be had from getting the vandal's IP banned from wikipedia. Further, 4chan is not so amoral as to find incorrect pharmaceutical information lulz-worthy...it's more likely that they'd add the name of someone they didn't like to an article about embarrassing social diseases, eg suggesting Christopher Poole has a raging case of syphilis.

I can't quantify this of course, but I'd say the rare but real risks from bad QC and errors in pharma documentation (typos or oversights on dosage level, contraindications, half-life and so on) are a much greater risk than that presented by /b/tards.

4chan is not so amoral as to find incorrect pharmaceutical information lulz-worthy

Uh. http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Epilepsy_Foundation

Hey, I said nothing about those unworthies at 420chan. Also, guilty lulz.

these things tend to be reversed pretty quickly.

I have an ongoing feud with a friend of mine where my part of the feud is to refer to him as a juggler as much and publicly as possible (He hates jugglers, and thinks they should all be shot, hence..)

As a joke I created a Wikipedia article with his name, and spent some time writing up an entry about the great juggler that he was. The plan was to send it to all of his friends. I submitted the article, composed an e-mail and refreshed the Wikipedia page to make sure it worked. The time it took me to write the e-mail was long enough for some editor to delete the article.

All this is true, however there is still a non-zero risk involved. Especially when human life is involved.

Zero risk doesn't exist.

You are correct, which is why I qualified the statement by pointing out the human life factor. If human life is involved, and the risk can be mitigated then it should be.

Nothing is risk free, but when you are dealing with something that is irreplaceable, even small reductions in risk are worthy of consideration.

well, one danger is medical companies recommending their drugs directly to consumers. I've heard that consumers often enter medical offices requesting specific drugs which may or may not be best for their condition. I hear that some are very adamant, convinced that a specific drug is what they need.

That's what you have sugar pills for, the placebo effect will work miracles for these patients.

To support the assertion, this article references the main page of the website of a marketing company who published a "report" where 50% of doctors had used wikipedia as a reference.

I can't find the "report" on their website anywhere.

Are they trying to imply that 50% of physicians had looked up something...anything?... on wikipedia, or are they implying that 50% of their sample of physicians made a diagnostic or treatment decision based on wikipedia? What was the population surveyed?

If anyone can link to the actual study/report, I'd be interested.

There is much more reliable online information than wikipedia for physicians, eg. Up-To_Date, Lexicomp, epocrates, MD consult, online Merck, etc. I've never heard of a physician basing diagnosis or treatment on anything found on wikipedia.

I love wikipedia, but don't use it like that.

... on Gossip Girl.

Damn, I've got to remember: "Straight face. No fooling around -- it's a slippery slope. We hackers don't appreciate that sort of thing." :)

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